Assassin’s Creed 2 Day#9: Torri, Carrozze, e la Morte di un Nemico

Day 9 in Assassin’s Creed 2 finishes off my current set of kills. The game maintains its solid gameplay in the core parts with some innovative play in the level design and a whole new mechanic for AC2 (but one I’ve seen a bit in recent games). The narrative is moving along and the detail is great, but the plot is honestly just a convenient string of missions for me. I also stumble into a lot more annoying mini-game play around finding the vague conspiratorial truth. Spoilers within.

I pick the game up back in tomb in the quest for one of those other achievements, assassin’s armor or whatever.  I climb my way out of the room I’m in and enter a room with more baddies. Again, I could probably sneak, but instead it’s more fighting. I do seem  to figure out how to fight the big guy — you grab him during a swing with B which throws him off balance and then you stab him while he’s recovering. That fight finished, I climb up some bookshelves and walls and end up in front of more enemies. I notice them the first time when I’m knocked off a ledge by one guy, and I have to use medicine to recover and then reclimb. This time up, I pull him over ledge first. There’s then a large tower to scale, killing a few other guys along the way. None of it is too hard, and I get to top without further incident.  I get the seal and the surrounding money and then climb up a ladder to get out. That’s syncs me, and I reappear on the top of the tower. I try to get down and of course I screw up and fall to desyncing. It’s so stupid that I have so much trouble getting down after getting armor seals. This should be denouement, not challenge.

From there, I wander looking for my next assassination. I find another glyph along the way. This time, 16 tells me that some group was mostly heroes, but the web of history was disrupted, and thus good loses and evil takes what is not theirs. Don’t ask me — I’m just transcribing it.  This minigame is another circle puzzle, but now with different rotating elements are linked such that occasionally rotating one ring automatically rotates another, so it’s a little more challenging. There are four circle puzzles in this set, and they tell part of the story of Cain where he declares himself Master Mahan. The last puzzle is a black and white etching and it SUCKS because it’s nearly impossible to read, but I get it. It ends with a “behold the mark of Cain” kind of line, and I get the passcode and a new video of naked people jumping as a reward.

After that, I get to my next mission, the final one of this set. The last guy has lost his mind and is ranting from the top of a big tower. There are a lot of archers around the tower guarding him, so I have to clear out archers first. This is  pretty fun; I’m jumping from tower to tower around the central tower killing archers. It’s got a nice rhythm. Along the way, I accidentally find another glyph. 16 spews pure crazy talk this time, and then it’s another picture sorting mess. I luck out and guess it right early. After that, I have to scroll around a picture to uncover a piece of eden in it, and that’s trivial. The video this time is of a girl descending, still making basically no sense.

I then go back to climbing up and killing archers along the way. Archers dead, it’s a maze like climb up the tower the guy is on,  and then a short sword fight to kill the target. Climb is quite fun.  He’s crazy and tells me nothing as he dies, but after he’s dead,  I get a letter from the target for Jacopo that tells me where the meeting is to be. I get control back and head to a target spot.

I immediately have a new mission to tail Jacopo, and when I accept it, I have to tail him for a while. It’s interesting while kind of easy,  but then there’s restricted area where the guards spot me it seems automatically and I desync. I’m not sure how to get in there, but the second time over I go a long way around into the restricted area, and I succeed just as the guards spot me. I then easedrop on the conspirators. The Maestro rags on Jacopo for his failures and then stabs him. As Jacopo is bleeding on the ground,  Ezio CS gets captured as the Maestro knew he was there. As the Maestro leaves, he tells his guards to kill  Ezio. I get control back and fight my way through guards. I end by putting Jacopo out of his misery. That finishes memory 5. As I’m fading out, I see an indicator that there’s a glyph here. I’m going to have to return sometime for that.

I reappear in Firenze. My mission takes me to Lorenzo deMedici, and when I get there, Ezio CS tells Lorenzo that the Pazzi are dead. Lorenzo thanks me and  gives a Medici cape that makes me permanently anonymous in Florence and Tuscany. That’s rad. My next mission start is back at daVinci’s place, but he’s not there when I arrive, and a stranger tells me he has gone to Venezia to do some work for a patron. I’m not sure why, but my next goal is outside of the city, so I run out there and load a new map. This takes me to the mountains,  and there I find Leonardo on the road. He has flying machine in cart, and I agree to ride with him. We cut ahead in time on the ride, and in CS Ezio notices that they are being followed. Now we’re in a car chase video game. It feels basically like the caravan sections of Brutal Legend. Men chase us and I have to use the carriage to dodge fire on the road and use sharp turns to throw off guys who are jumping on the top of the cart. My carriage’s health is quite low by the end, but I survive. At the end of the chase, Ezio CS  leaves Leonardo to take the cart ahead and I get control back to fight off the pursuers on foot. I fight off the attackers in a pretty rough battle, and then head down the road to Venezia.

I get to the end of the road and load a new map: someplace called Forli. There’s a new viewpoint, so despite the fact that there’s a mission, that’s my first stop. I get it, and unlock a bunch more viewpoints. I feel their call, but it’s too late to do rest of them and I call it a night.